I Enter a Pub «

I Enter a Pub

Tuesday 14th May 2013

To Hastings for May Bank Holiday, that ancient festival day of our pagan past. Hastings, as you know, is where Angus Willis reigns supreme with his world-famous Home Store (only opened a year ago but immediately world-famous) and his supreme, extreme Tudor House – it really is Tudor although it wasn’t when he bought it.

But Hastings May Day Ancient Festival of Jack in the Green, where a 12 foot leafy phallus is paraded through the streets, is something else. It’s a mass entertainment. You stand in the street for an hour while the procession passes. There are strange 12 foot dolls on wheels, operated from within by a person, as well as people of all ages dyed green and wound with greenery. Tremendous drums and whacking of sticks accompany. Somehow, although a rending of life into art of some sort, it is not Poor Little Rich Gay. Too much uncomplicated joy. No torment. It was a superb crystalline day, although chilly.

Fergus Strachan, partner of Angus Willis, the famous Celtic beauty, who doesn’t cook or do decor but works night and day on his face and hair and suffers from terrible nerves, was present. He has championed Dermarolla, which is where you have your face rolled over with a spiked metal roller (£700). A deeper dermal layer which shuts down in later life is bucked off its arse and the face is re-born. Fergus is living proof that it works.

He had friends over and friends of friends one of whom knew the all-you-can-eat eatery in Buckhurst Hill where Laura Malcolm’s mother’s bridesmaid was a patron in later life. The bridesmaid had indeed been personal assistant to the head of Lloyds Bank but other pensioners economised by eating nothing all week in order to best benefit from the £7.50 before 6.30pm all-you-can-eat option. In the queue for the buffet, though, their hunger was such that frequently they would gnaw on the arm of the person in front of them.

We lunched in Battle which was delightful, then later we went into a pub. At 4.30 in the afternoon. It was packed for the Pagan Festival. Nowhere to sit. I had some trouble grasping. It did not appear that these people were resting in glamour in between investment deals. It was unlikely that later they would be looking at fabric samples, paint samples, property details or alternative face cleansers. No, this was it. All their lives had come to rest in the pub at 4.30 in the afternoon and might remain there indefinitely. They lacked for nothing.

It just wouldn’t do. Angus Willis and I were agreed. We couldn’t sit or rather stand around in a pub – too many frontiers to push back. What next for asparagus? Could tulips be used differently? Angus is secretly cultivating Giant Hogweed. So we left for dear, darling Great Dixter …. of which more later.

Come back, come back!